part the fifth
Previous turn
-0-0-
It takes Sam four hours on a bus and thirty minutes walking to get to the show.
They’re getting farther away.
Billy’s tour is moving on.
And Sam hasn’t even thought about it until now, until right this very second, and.
-0-0-
Billy gets Sam off in the private bathroom connected to the greenroom,
(because seriously he’s getting used to everyone knowing that he’s just had sex,)
in the hopes that Sam won’t try to fuck him onstage with nothing but the power of his mind.
It works, to mixed effect; Sam still seems to want to fuck Billy, but now he has this kicked-puppy mopey face like Billy will personally take him out back with a shotgun in a minute instead.
When Billy bounces off the stage and tries to climb down Sam’s throat, the kid backs off and says, “Hey,”
we need to talk
“can we just head straight back to your place tonight, you think?”
“I’ve got. Y’know.” Billy makes the pinched-fingers sign for weed.
The frown turns into a genuine bitchface. Like, whoa. He huffs for a few seconds, and then says, “Just. Not tonight, okay, Billy?”
Oh, fucking goddamn it.
Depressing good-bye sex.
Christ.
-0-0-
Sam sort of wallows in the taxi on the way to Billy’s new room - he switched hotels, because the tour’s moving, and now Sam figures that the only reason Jennifur had so many shows so close together was for the Stanford kids, so that a house could be packed and a fan could get in another night.
And.
And, shit, he feels a little bit like crying, when he’s never even come close to it since he made friends at school after he left
deanwhathaveIdonedean
home.
Suddenly, Billy says, “You don’t get to do this, kid.”
“Do what?” even though Sam already knows.
“This.” Billy shakes a splayed-wide hand, long fingers, in little circles that indicate all things component to the entity Sam. “You don’t get to do it, kid, fucking hell.”
“I can do whatever. It’s not like you care.”
Billy slides his slick rock star fucking sunglasses down his nose
(and it's two-thirty in the morning, why is he even wearing them?)
to glare at Sam. He clearly isn’t buying this shit.
Sam feels his shoulders raise defensively, and very deliberately does not think about all the fights with Dad when Dean jumped in to calm Sam down and Sam just tore his head off.
He does not think about saying good-bye to Dad,
(one last fuck you for the road)
or what happened with Dean,
(and how red his mouth and white his face, after, shocked and horrified because Sam hadn’t been able to take it anymore and just kissed him and ran)
and hitchhiking to the bus stop from their broken house at the edge of nowhere
(with all his possessions and books and angst.)
Sam refuses to think about it.
Because this is nothing, nothing like that.
Billy’s watching Sam, and he says, really low and exasperated, “You never even told me your last name, Sam. You do not get to do this.”
“It’s Winchester,” Sam says, startled, because how the hell did that never come up?
But a lot of things never came up.
So Sam pushes aside the little pile of resentment he’s been building in preparation for burning it as an effigy of Billy to a far corner, and says very resolutely, “My mother died in a fire before I was a year old. My brother mostly raised me, my father mostly disciplined me, and between that and moving around every couple of months I managed to turn into what you see today.”
Billy shakes himself, in what's nearly-but-not a shrug. Then he pushes his glasses up and grins. “Which part? The scholarship student, the druggie, the boywhore groupie, or the nut who speaks in tongues and pulls Greek mythology out of his ass?”
Sam turns to watch San Francisco spin past. “All parts of me. But mostly the first and last.”
And, weirdly, his mood has soared up already.
-0-0-
They’ve never had sex sober, and both of them know it, and neither of them will say it out loud, because if words aren’t spoken then they aren’t real, even if the truths they shape are still behind them.
Billy’s down for it. He’s pretty much on board with sex whenever.
Watching Sam peel his shirt up, the gradual revelation of his stomach and chest and shoulders and everything, makes the room unsteady, spinning like Billy’s drunk or high or anything but he’s not.
-0-0-
They have sex
make love
sitting up on the bed, Sam fingers splayed in the space between Billy’s shoulderblades, every arch and stretch translated from Billy’s spine to Sam’s fingertips, slick over salt sweat, blood pounding in his ears, no air in the world because they’re pressed too close together, staring, nose to nose and eyes wide shut, and it’s not that Sam sees the fire beneath Billy’s skin because he wants it be there, it’s because it’s really there, and they’re really this close, this close, and moving so fast and so far together, together, and they’re there.
They’re here, and it’s so far from where they started, and Sam’s absolutely certain of it for long enough to fall asleep.
-0-0-
Billy wakes up when Sam rolls over him, props himself up on his elbows. He’s fuzzy from too little sleep, but nothing else, and Billy’s made an Olympic sport out of too little sleep.
So he’s already mostly awake when Sam asks, very softly, “Can I come with you?”
Which.
What?
Billy stares up at the kid, wide-eyed, completely at a loss. He expected Sam to be upset, yeah, to linger over the goodbyes, but.
“What the hell do you mean?”
Sam’s red in his forehead and cheeks, and he rocks back, shoulders bunching as he gets farther way. “Just. Could I do that? Travel with you.”
Billy’s still at the way the fuck surprised stage. He can’t even process this. “Why d’you wanna do that?”
Sam makes a face and rocks forward a little, so he has enough room to shrug guiltily, and Billy’s pinned down like this, and what the fuck is Sam thinking?
And Billy suddenly realizes that Sam isn’t even twenty and shouldn’t be expected to make rational choices. Clearly.
Sam makes another face, an embarrassed and goofy one, and says, “Because I. Y’know. We.”
Billy pushes on the kid’s giant fucking shoulders until Sam gets off and Billy can get out of the bed. It sort of doesn’t help, because Billy’s bare-ass naked, but whatever, he starts looking for something to wear, boxers, anything, not those, probably wouldn’t help to wear Sam’s stuff.
When his dick is suitably covered, Billy points a finger and turns into his father for long enough to scold, “No,” and starts throwing all of Sam’s clothes onto the bed, onto Sam, in case Sam takes the hint.
Sam’s more confused than hint-taking. “No? What’re you-“
“No, you can’t come with, fuck.”
Sam’s mouth opens, slowly, gaping by degrees, and his eyes actually grow to the same epic fucking proportions as Bambi’s mom, right before that hunter shot her.
Billy puts up two hands, palms flat to Sam, cuts him off before he tries to say anything. Then he curls most of his fingers down, points his index fingers in the most authoritative and stern way imaginable considering he’s not wearing much more than jeans.
“Sam, you are, are pre-law and stupid and too young to.” Sam’s looking at Billy like, like something, and it’s not fair. Billy yells, “Full ride at Stanford, Sam! Why would you, you can’t just leave that to be a fucking groupie or something!”
Oh god, oh fucking jesus, those might be tears, Billy’s ready to jump out the window rather than deal with this.
Sam’s voice is scraped raw and harsh and hollow and hurt. “But. This.” His hand waves weakly between them.
Billy imitates it, harder and sharper and it’s really vital that Sam understand this part. “This,” and he draws out the ‘s’, hisses it really very viciously, “is nothing, kid. It is nothing. This isn’t happy endings and holding hands, because it isn’t anything, and the only thing it approaches being is sex.”
Sam’s crying. Fuck shit damn fucking fuck. Not, like, sobbing, but like he’s turned to stone and can’t feel the sluggish creep of water down his own face.
“You don’t.” Sam stops, because it looks like he refuses to sniffle or anything, but Billy knows what he’s asking.
So.
“No.”
Sam glares a hole through the wall over Billy’s shoulder. “Not at all.”
“No.”
Sam breathes in, huge, puffing himself up, and then blows it all out, smoke-swirls of the ventilation, full circle, exhales until Billy can hear the wet crackle of too far.
And the world’s spin grinds to a stop, just for a second.
Then Sam gasps in again and blinks the tears out and wipes his eyes with his shirt and shakes his head and turns to the window and says, “Fine. Fine.”
He gathers his clothes up in his arms and starts to climb out of bed, and Billy says, “Fine,” and grabs a shirt and goes into the bathroom to give the kid some fucking privacy.
-0-0-
“You know,” Sam says, staring wetly up at Billy’s ceiling, stretched out on the bed with his arms out, bring your own cross.
On the floor, back against the bed, cigarette burning to nothing between his fingers, Billy says, “I know everything, kid.”
“You know,” Sam repeats doggedly, “I wish you’d accidentally called me Sammy.”
Billy’s staring away, but Sam’s at enough of an angle to catch the blue in the corner of his eye, looking. “You told me not to.”
Sam shrugs. “Just once, maybe, after I told you not to. Just on accident, because you weren’t thinking.”
Billy’s gone back to inspecting the wall. “Yeah, well. I didn’t.”
“Yeah.” Sam’s not even crying at all anymore, see? “It’s just. It’s fine. It just would have made this seem more…”
“More,” Billy echoes with a nod.
Sam sighs. “Yeah.”
Quiet awhile. Sam watches the second hand on his watch click around, one full circle, two.
Billy takes a deep breath. His cigarette’s been forgotten, gone out and done smoking. “As long as we’re calling each other substitutes for other people we’re actually in love with, would it have been too much trouble for you to bitch me out a little more?”
Sam laughs, taken off guard. “Who said you were substituting for anyone?”
“No one.”
“You weren’t.”
“I guess I just assumed.”
Sam ignores the subject and asks, “Who cusses you out?”
“My best mate.” Billy drops the cigarette in the ashtray and absentmindedly gets out another. “We were in a band. Before.”
He lights up and inhales and exhales and asks, “Who calls you Sammy?”
Sam’s heart stops for a second. “This. This guy. Dean.”
Billy just nods, like that explains everything.
But he doesn’t, so Sam explains, “You shouldn’t think that - No, we never. We just knew each other for a long time. I just. Miss him.”
“And let me guess. He’s also really hot on a stage, or something.”
Sam cringes, and he wants to say
that’s not how it was
but, seriously, it’s not like anything he says will matter in the long run. “When he’s performing for someone, yeah, he is. But it’s more - he’s got a kind of glow in him, and I can’t,”
and I can’t stay away
“and you’ve got it, too, it’s like a giant neon sign that says ‘potential soulmate’ or something.”
Sam sort of wants to kill himself for saying that out loud.
Billy laughs, though, sort of darkly amused. He holds up his free hand, first two fingers wound around each other, and says, “But I never called you Sammy, so,” his fingers spring apart, come unknotted with no effort at all, “the soulmates thing is out.”
Sam mimics him, staring at how far apart his fingers can spread.
And then it’s quiet again.
And then Sam says, “I just thought…”
“Don’t worry about it. It was fun, it was an adventure, it was something new. Okay?”
“Oh, is that how they do it in Canadia?”
“Promiscuity, hockey, and curling,” Billy confirms with a touch of pride. “These are the national pastimes.”
“Sounds like a fun country.”
“Hey, we kicked your asses.”
Sam has absolutely no idea what he means for a second, and then he scoffs. “Is this about 1812? Two hundred years, Billy.”
“We burned your capital, ‘sall I’m saying. To the ground.”
“When're you gonna give it a rest?”
“When you stop calling it Can-ay-dee-ah.”
Sam giggles, in an extremely undignified way, and if he circles the globe a few times first he might be able to make it back to Stanford before a test in Poetry.
So he’d better leave, soon.
Probably.
-0-0-
The kid’s taking it better than Billy expected, which means that either this is just a teenager’s crush or Sam’s way too used to being hurt.
But. It’s the second one, right? Because of that guy Billy’s sort-of-replacing. Because Sam’s heart’s been broken before, and Billy’s just opening up an old, deep wound.
Yeah.
So when Sam stands awkwardly next to the door and fidgets, Billy goes to him and stretches his neck and tilts his chin, invitation, and grins.
“Good luck, Sam,” he says, and Sam gives him a big gooey look and presses their lips together, no movement, more simple and chaste than their first kiss.
“You, too, Billy,” and he gives Billy a huge bearhug, and he’s smiling, very slightly, when he leaves.
The kid has a long way to go before he’s home.
Billy hopes Sam won’t manage to lose his way, twist himself around and go in a circle back to the start, waste all the effort for another wrong turn.
-0-0-
Billy half-expects Sam to show up at their next show, even though the kid’ll have to travel something like seven hours to get here, and no matter how much he likes Billy, no one’s that crazy.
Yeah, Billy still half-expects it.
Sam doesn’t, though.
So.
That’s that, come full circle and back where they started, lesson lost, no moral to see here.
That’s all, folks.
Next turn